Leaders Invite NATO Secretary-general to Address US Congress

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg speaks during a media conference after a meeting of the NATO-Russia Council at NATO headquarters in Brussels, Jan. 25, 2019.

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Leaders Invite NATO Secretary-general to Address US Congress

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WASHINGTON —

Democrats and Republicans are inviting NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg to address a joint meeting of Congress next month around the 70th anniversary of the trans-Atlantic alliance.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, with agreement from Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and other members of Congress, is expected to extend the invitation, the leaders' offices said. The address is expected to be one of several events in the U.S. capital celebrating the treaty's signing in 1949, congressional officials said.

The bipartisan show of support for NATO comes after President Donald Trump has criticized the alliance's 29-member nations for, in his view, not paying their fair share to protect against threats, such as Russian aggression. He has threatened to pull the U.S. out of the alliance.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Each of NATO's countries spends money on its own military capabilities in an effort to lessen dependence on the U.S. for defense against threats. Stoltenberg said that some NATO allies will spend an additional $100 billion by the end of 2020.

The celebration of the alliance's anniversary is the latest bipartisan defiance of Trump on the issue. McConnell in particular among Republicans has been outspoken about his support for NATO, issuing a memorable rebuke of Trump's behavior at Russian President Vladimir Putin's side in Helsinki last summer.

“We value the NATO treaty,” McConnell declared. “We believe the European Union counties are our friends, and the Russians are not.”

For his part, Trump campaigned on the idea that the U.S. is paying too much to defend European countries and vowed to make them pay their fair share. In his State of the Union address in January and in Hanoi last week, Trump misleadingly suggested that the U.S. has “picked up” $100 billion from NATO since he's been president.

“A hundred billion dollars more has come in,” he said in Hanoi.

In reality, Stoltenberg said on Feb. 15 that NATO allies in Europe and Canada had spent an additional $41 billion on their own defense since 2016, and that by the end of 2020 that figure would rise to $100 billion. So, the $100 billion refers to additional military spending over a four-year period, not over the past two years.

In 2014, during the Obama administration, NATO members agreed to move “toward” spending 2 percent of their gross domestic product on their own defense by 2024. Trump's pressure may have spurred some countries to increase their spending faster than they planned or to become more serious about moving to the 2 percent goal.

The United States is the biggest and most influential NATO member, contributing about 22 percent of the alliance's budget.

Member-state contributions were a central point of friction at a NATO summit in Brussels last year. However, in a January interview with Fox News, Stoltenberg said NATO countries heard Trump “loud and clear” and were “stepping up.”

Some analysts have warned diminished U.S. leadership in NATO has already weakened the alliance. Former Ambassador Nicholas Burns said in a recent report NATO is facing its ”most difficult” crisis in seven decades and “the single greatest threat (to NATO) is the absence of strong, principled American presidential leadership for the first time in its history.”

President Donald Trump meets with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg in the Oval Office of the White House, May 17, 2018, in Washington.

Stoltenberg has said Trump will meet with his counterparts from the military alliance at a summit in London in December.

Stoltenberg said Wednesday that the leaders will “address the security challenges we face now and in the future, and to ensure that NATO continues to adapt in order to keep its population of almost 1 billion people safe.”